With Hard-to-fix iThings, Apple’s ‘Done Everything it Can to Put Repair Guys Out of Business’

Posted on March 31, 2014 8:30 AM by Rob Williams

At Macworld, held last week in San Francisco, iFixit head-honcho Kyle Wiens used his speaking opportunity to take a jab at Apple for its desire to make its products difficult to repair. In fact, with his wording, Wiens alludes to the idea that Apple has gone out of its way to make its devices difficult to repair so that it can hog a bigger share of the repair market, in turn affecting those who repair mobile devices for a living.

Most of Apple’s products are hard-to-fix, as proven by iFixit’s many teardowns, and while Apple certainly isn’t the only company that could improve in this area, it’s the worst overall. Wiens does mention that the hard-to-repair crown still belongs to Microsoft’s Surface Pro, however, which scored 1/10 on his company’s repairability scale (1 being the hardest to repair).

In some cases, Apple’s devices have gotten a bit better, but it’s really hit-or-miss. The iPhone 5S, for example, scores 6/10, which means you’d need some decent experience and care to repair it yourself. Samsung’s Galaxy S4, by contrast, scored 8/10, as did Google’s Nexus 5. But not all is kosher on the Android side; HTC’s One, like the Surface Pro, scored 1/10.

Clearly, there’s a good deal of room for improvement from more than just Apple.